multiversallogs | the little one stops to shut the gate

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the little one stops to shut the gate :: [OPEN]

Who: A whole lot of ants and YOU!
What: Exploring houses overrun by giant ants! Interacting with ants!
Where: Three specific ant hive houses have cropped up in Baedal.
When: The ants become visible late Sukkardi, so any time after Shundi will do.
Notes: To organize expeditions into the ant hives and to see what your characters will find there, please see the OOC post. NPCs, general GMing, and mod guidance are all available upon request.
Warnings: Bugs! Possible horror. Will update as needed.

When the ants come out of the ground it happens very quietly and it happens at night. Baedal wakes up to chitinous sound of insect labour. At first there is some panic - memories of strange creatures emerging from below to attack the city fresh in everyone's mind - but it is soon evident that the ants, while curious, pose no immediate threat to the City. They seem content to work and live inside the houses they have occupied; houses no one has noticed or cared about for years.

Soon, the ant-occupied houses begin to change. The ants are building something on the rooftops, something like towers, stretching towards the heavens. Birds that fly too close to the buildings quickly disappear.

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After the ant fails to engage her in conversation, Integra goes to the far wall where the worker trail is climbing up and out the a broken window, the only one in the room. She shoves asewing desk against the wall, then stands on it and leans out, pale hair dangerously close to luring a gerbil-sized attache.

She stays quiet, peering upwards, listening. There's nothing but the faint crunch-hum of the ants, and that strikes her as odd. Sobek Croix is not a metropolis; there should be other animals about. Birdsong, at least.

"What did the spiders do?"

"They ate." The words don't exactly detract from the eeriness of the situation, but Boromir is busy looking behind the sales counter at some dusty boxes. "Elves, men, orcs. Anything, really. They were said to be descended from a creature of great evil with an insatiable hunger, which I suspect mated with some lesser horror and they were the result. They dwell in the forest of Mirkwood and the mountains that separate Gondor from Mordor. Fortunately they could be killed by the usual means -blades, arrows- and they had a particular aversion to light or fire."

By this point he's opened up one of the boxes, to reveal several candles. "Speaking of which," he says, holding one up.

"Your homeland is not one to do things by halves," she reflects, pulling herself back inside and navigating around some curious ants. A few stopped to wiggle their appendages at her on the outside, and while she's not frightened of them, the idea of being crawled on still offers little appeal. They don't seem bloodthirsty, but then again, perhaps they've just not realized humans bleed yet.

Integra looks a slight bit puzzled for a moment when Boromir brandishes a candle, but then remembers not everyone has such keen night vision. (Even with her glasses, she's just used to it.) Oh, right. Stepping back over to him, she takes her lighter out of her pocket and ignites the candle he's holding.

"That's better," he says, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Luckily he was wearing his leather gloves, detail of the White Tree sticking over his sleeves, and didn't need to worry about any heat or melting wax. He looks over to Integra and where she had been. "See anything interesting?"

She almost doesn't even bother to look, so sure she is of her vision in the dark, but in the process of glancing back as she moves to put her lighter away - pardon.

Integra glances at Boromir, then back at the newly visible door. A beat, and she reaches out and snuffs the flame between gloved fingertips, then looks back.

Nothing.

"I suppose I should ask if we're having the same hallucination," she says, still staring at the space that is no longer a door and holding her lighter. She flicks it on, to no change.

That was definitely not what he meant in regards to his previous question. He manages to get a quick glance at the door before the light goes out, before managing, "...I've seen something like that before."

He walks over to where the door was, peering at the wall in the darkness. "Before I came here. We were travelling and had to cut through the Mines of Moria." There's something telling in the way he says the name -he's not exactly the kind of person who is easily shaken, but Balrogs will do that to a person. And the apparent loss of a friend. He moves on, "The doorway was some sort of elven magic. It could only be seen when the moon was out in full."

"Magicked doorways are for protection," she says, her voice muted but steady - not comforting, but distinctly calm. "It's a matter of sorting what's being protected." What's in or out. She presses a hand to the wall, then turns and lights the candle again (assuming Boromir is being cooperative).

When she doesn't see it again right away, she holds the lighter back up to the candle and - huh. "Can you see it constantly?"

Or if such doorways protect whoever is inside, or if they're protecting the outside from whatever lurks in the deeps. It's not something Boromir voices and, quite frankly, not something he really wants to talk about, so he stays silent on the subject.

He continues to hold the candle once Integra has lit it, and observes the wall once more. "It's hard to tell. I'm not sure if it's just my eyes playing tricks on me."

She makes a thoughtful noise, and looks at the ants for a bit. So there's a hidden door that can only be seen in the light of the candle-flame; just her lighter's not cutting it. She walks back and snags another of the candles, lights it, holds it out - and she can see it steadily now. It's a little disorienting, but she knows it's just her mind not liking the sudden change of perception. Another few candles go in her jacket pocket.

Near the door again, she glances at Boromir, lit candle in one hand, CiD in the other. She doesn't say it, but if he'd like to go wait outside, she's not going to whine at him to accompany her in the face of being unsettled in a deep way by magic doors.

As if. Integra could be marching into the Void to go taunt Morgoth himself, and Boromir would still be there, helpfully translating the insults into Quenya. He stands there resolute and glances back at her, giving a little nod. Although he may have brought his sword up partially out of its sheath with his free hand. That's only practical, as far as he's concerned.

Good man.

Integra makes a brief missive through her CiD to the Hellsing channel, informing the central command that they're off to do this - in the event they never return or become trapped, it's prudent someone know where they are - and then puts the device away and reaches out to open the door.

Inside, there's a room not unlike the one they're already in; abandoned, unkempt, though ant-free. She steps inside and looks around, slow and careful. "I can't even see any spellmarks," she observes. No engraved words, no chalk or blood marks. She holds the handle up to the doorframe, checking closer.

The abandoned room comes as something of a relief, although he's still a little suspicious. Boromir purposefully looks up (...not that the ceiling is high, and he is ridiculously tall) and into the dark corners for any unwelcome presence. Nothing. He slides his sword back in place, content for now.

"Perhaps they're built into the walls? Although I can't say I know much about wizardry."

"I've no witch's knack," she admits. "But it's been in my upbringing, like a science. It's used far too often by our enemies." And so she needs to be able to recognize it, counter it - break it, if needed; she doesn't consider alchemy magic (because it isn't), so she doesn't bother to mention that she practices that, spells aside.

There are two doors in this new room, though, both at the back of the room, on opposite walls. Integra passes by them to look at the doorknobs and listen, though she doesn't open either just yet. Instead, she paces back to the original door, and looks out at the ants, who've carried on as if they're now invisible to them. Perhaps they are. She closes the door halfway, and stops to look at the mark drawn on the back. For a while she says nothing.

"This is the same mark that was on the creatures that attacked us in weeks past."

Magic and science have an odd place in Arda, entangled and inseparable for now (and later on, because Eru Iluvater's spirit really is at the centre of everything). The general rule is don't use either for evil purposes, and you should be fine. Not that anyone other than elves or Maiar could really use magic without some dreadful trade-off. And even then.

Boromir eyes the mark on the back of the door. "I remember it." He makes a sound that is caught between a loud exhale and a weary sigh, before voicing the obvious. "This doesn't bode well."

"No." Her voice is wry, and not pleased. She opens the door all the way up again and walks briskly back outside to pick up a handful of dirt. When she comes back into the hidden room, she leaves a coating of dirt in the doorway. It's not the best trick to see if anyone follows them or goes in and out while they're in deeper rooms, but this isn't a James Bond outfit.

"Left or right?" Time to go into the next room.

Clever. It's not the first time he's admired his employer's thinking, and it probably won't be the last.

"Right," he says, sounding rather decisive about it, too.

Right it is. Integra goes first, pushing the door open easily and still holding her candle, as much for light as for making sure that this whole place doesn't dissolve around her or leave them trapped in a wall.

There's nothing immediately alarming in the next room - a mirror on the wall, a dresser on the opposite with a number of innocuous items, papers in boxes, abandoned. She begins to look about, seeing what she can read.

Boromir does likewise, holding his candle as steadily as possible and trying not to squint in the dim light. At the dresser he picks up and dusts off what looks like a pamphlet. One word in particular stands out. "Candlelighters. Hm." He does his best to flick through it one-handedly.

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the little one stops to shut the gate :: [OPEN]

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